I visited the Windows Office Update Site to patch my MS Office 2000 Premium installation and the site required the Office 2000 Service Release 1a Patch, which I have on a CD. While installing SR1a with Administrator privileges, the following error occurred:

"Error 1402. Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MSFS. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel." Clicking OK rolls the installation back.

After some research, I ran a full system scan with updated versions of AdAware SE Plus, SpyBot, and PestPatrol and again tried to install the SR1a Patch from CD-ROM. Result: Error 1402.

I thought the problem might be a corrupted registry key, so I ran MS RegClean and Norton SystemWorks 2004 registry repair and Windows repair tools, as well as an updated Norton AntiVirus scan. Result: Error 1402.

Next, I decided to uninstall MS Office and reinstall from scratch with the original disks. Result: Error 1402. Now I've got a machine with no MS Office 2000 Premium.

Next, I ran the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility (KB article 290301), which found the former MS Office installation and, I assume, removed any remaining bits and pieces. Then I again tried to install MS Office. Result: Error 1402.

Finally, I set up a new Administrator account (again, KB 236427) and tried to install. Result: Error 1402.

Now I'm up the creek without a paddle or, shall we say, up the hard drive without a single MS Office application. The cynical side of me says that this is another MS ploy to force an upgrade, but I'm perfectly happy with Office 2K. There's a considerable amount about 1402 errors, but it's all rehashing the above. Curiously, the pertinent MS KB Article, last reviewed on 9/14/2004 warns: "This information is preliminary and has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Use only with discretion."

Who is Participating?

Open regedit.
Make a backup.
Highlight Software
Click Edit, Permissions
Make sure you see SYSTEM with Full Control on Permissions
Make sure you see SYSTEM with Full Control on Security
In Advanced click on the two boxes to Reset Permissions and Allow Inheritable Permissions

I was unable to find a MS Technet article that provides this information, so I'm writing (typing) it down here. Don't hold me responsible if something gets messed up! Though I assume it cannot get any worse than it is for you now, and these steps usually resolve the problem. I also assume that you've performed troubleshooting of the individual applications. For Word and Excel, go to those pages at www.theofficeexperts.com and look for the troubleshooting steps. I also assume your hard drive has been cleaned up. For those instructions, see www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm

Errors.

If you get errors during uninstall or reinstall, write down the exact error message. Go to Microsoft TechNet and type the error message into the keywords search with your version of Office as the product.

Backup your files.

Type the following into your Find/Search, exactly as it appears (copy it if you want), find/search the files, and copy them somewhere else on your PC:

*.doc,*.dot,*.xls,*.xlt,*.ppt,*.pot,*.mdb

Those are Word documents (doc), Word templates (dot), Excel workbooks (xls), Excel templates (xlt), PowerPoint presentations (ppt), PowerPoint templates (pot), and Access databases (mdb). If you've never made your own templates, use just the following because the default templates will be reinstalled:

*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt,*.mdb

Special Files

*.pst files are Outlook files that contain all of your Outlook objects. You can also save your mail settings in Outlook: open Outlook, hit Tools-Accounts, choose an account and *export* it. Do it for each account. These become *.iaf files.

normal.dot and personal.xls are files that store macros and other customizations in Word and Excel respectively. You may want to back these up. Additionally, Excel stores custom toolbars in *.xlb files.

Delete the program files.

Rarely should programs be removed this way. Choosing to remove the application via the Control Panel is always preferred, but is sometimes not possible. So we do it this way.

By default, Office is installed to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. Using My Computer or Windows Explorer, go to that folder. Delete the ENTIRE folder.

Remove the program from the Windows registry.

If the program isn't removed from the registry, it often is not fixed when you reinstall because the registry entries remain and are not overwritten on a reinstall.

To remove Office from the registry, hit Start-Run and type *regedit* (no asterisks) and hit Enter. This opens the Windows registry. Do not do anything except exactly as directed. Browse the registry similar to browsing in Windows Explorer and go to this folder:

If you have more than one, but only want one version of Office installed now, it is safe to rename the ENTIRE Office folder. If you are only trying to remove one version, then rename only the number. So...to rename the Office folder, simply right-click, hit Rename, and rename it to something like XOffice; or right-click the version number and rename it; for instance rename 10.0 to Old10.0. Using this method, you are backing up the old registry files, just to be safe. When Office is reinstalled, a new 10.0 (or whatever version number) folder will be created.

Important Note

If you're trying to fix just Word or one of the other applications, then you can go further into the version folder and rename just the application folder name. For instance, rename Word to OldWord. However, you will not want to delete the program files in this case. See the troubleshooting methods for Word and Excel, which I mentioned earlier.[i]

Continue with your task.
You should now be in a position to reinstall the program(s).

If you are reinstalling MULTIPLE versions of Office, they must be installed Oldest to Newest, and IN DIFFERENT FOLDERS!

Good luck!

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RIDeibertAuthor Commented: 2004-09-26

Dreamboat, thanks for the input, even if you did hurt my feelings about utilities ;-).

As directed by your post, I manually deleted the MS Office 2000 program files (binned the whole MS Office folder). Then I drilled to hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\office\X.0 but there was no Office key (recall that I had used the Windows Installer CleanUp...er, Utility. There *was* such a key under hkey_local_machine, however, which I renamed OldOffice. But when I rebooted and reattempted the Office 2000 installation, I got the same damn error:

"Error 1402. Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MSFS. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel."

Any further ideas? Could the problem be with the MSFS key?

Gratefully,

Richard

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RIDeibertAuthor Commented: 2004-11-06

Thanks a million glenn_1984. This seems to have allowed a full Office 2002 installation to proceed without the dreaded 1402 Error. Incidentally, in my system "Permissions" is under Security rather than Edit. Many, many thanks.